Truly an incredible waste. I made a list of each map that I looked at and whether I saw a credits room, if the map had fog or render distance limitations, and whether or not I saw something far in the distance. I also made note of the map maker if I saw it.

I somehow managed to get de_abstractplane to load as well, but I did not include it on the list because that thing crashes for no good reason sometimes. I can't walk into one of the spawn rooms without needing to restart my computer.

I know a few of the steps to zuhhh, but not all of them. I know that it leads to some secret room with a rotating rubix cube and a developer commentary node that does something. I don't know how to get to the point where it opens up and I also don't know what to do with the cube. There's also an empty room far under the map.

I know about how to get to the secret dance club on de_nightmare though. It's hard to noclip there because of the fog, so I put a rope that shows what direction you need to go to get there. I also know about de_fearmansion's gallery of hated peoples.

I don't know how to get to the secret rooms on ahhh_b3, zuhhh, arghhh, and basically any other map in a legit manner.

On arghhh, I've noticed a hidden message that appears in the library room that's just a worthless dead end. It had a message that said "I am not one / I buried 'N'" and I don't know what that means. Inside joke?

I also found some hidden rooms underneath de_deadblock that had a fireplace with the map credits. Then deep underneath that were sewer tunnels. And then even deeper under that was a white room with a radio that plays the Portal radio music. Also lots of blocks with question marks.I put Gman and a barrel for scale. Gman looked at the question marks a lot, which I thought was strange. I couldn't move them with the Physics Gun.

The only other thing I've noticed is a shape that's usually in the credits rooms of all of these maps. I found a doll in the credits room on de_doomhouse.

It feels weird being on this site actually talking to longstanding members. Especially the guy that made most of the maps that I've been spending all this time on.

Also. Is there any way that de_abstractplane could ever be fixed? It's probably one of my fave maps, but the map is horribly broken. My game crashes whenever I load into one of the wrong spawns or if I walk down a certain hallway. I assume that HomicidalApe is no longer around, but is there any way to modify the existing map? I know nothing about Hammer or map editing.

That shape that sits in most of the secret rooms is a thing that mappers add to stop other people from decompiling the map, i don't know why, but having it there confuses the software so that people can't get into the raw map file and figure secrets out.

Arghhh is a tough one, man. Me and three friends hopped into that map one night and tried to figure out the secret, and we made a bit of progress but nothing much. There are two invisible buttons in the map (on one of the library bookcases, and on this one ceiling light). Pressing those opens up a dark maze leading to a room with a radio on the ground broadcasting a numbers station. There's a button you press in that room and I don't know what it does. That's as far as we could go.

nippers_opus has a similar dark maze that you can access with an invisible button, but I always get lost in it and I don't know if it leads to anything at all.

Zuhhh is tricky too, but my guess is that the commentary node stops the cube if pressed at the right time. It seems like a hard thing to put into a map using just hammer though so I don't know. I doubt NIPPER would want to divulge the trick to such a puzzle.

As for de_abstractplane, I don't know if HomicidalApe has posted anything in a couple years, so you'd be better of decompiling it and trying to find out what causes it to freeze up. That's a pretty involved process though, unfortunately.

pkcrossing89 wrote:Also. Is there any way that de_abstractplane could ever be fixed? It's probably one of my fave maps, but the map is horribly broken. My game crashes whenever I load into one of the wrong spawns or if I walk down a certain hallway. I assume that HomicidalApe is no longer around, but is there any way to modify the existing map? I know nothing about Hammer or map editing.

Hi everybody! Much love. I still lurk here occasionally. I lost the source to the map long ago by saving over it without backups. But, like almost a year ago, I started trying to decompile/rebuild it, but quickly lost interest. However, due to others' interest, and now that I have some newfound free time (quit my job of 5 years), perhaps I'll pick it back up!

"it's basically valve's fault." - Joe"I have a very predictable pattern here: I make smarmy comments and call people on bullshit. If you start an asinine argument with me, I will not back down." - Hellboy"the reign of hellboy has seen unprecedented prosperity! viva la hellboy! - Joe

@Malone: Do you know what that weird bookcase message might mean? The "I am not one. I buried N?" Also do you know of any newer J2 maps outside the late 2000's abstract and Halloween map packs that are any good? I know there's a couple of new ones being made for CSGO.

@HomicialApe: Wow! I never thought I'd see you on here. Very nice to meet you. Love your stuff. This is really incredible news to me.

I don't know what the message in that room means. By best guess is that it's just a weird sentence to throw the player off. It's similar to the famous "I buried Paul" message hidden in one of The Beatles' songs.

I like putting super convoluted and hard to find secrets in all my maps, hidden by the fog controller's 'z clipping' plane. I'm such a bastard like that. de_absurdity also has a dance club in it, but you gotta find and shoot all the tiny 1x1x1 triggers. And like in all my maps, one of the secrets usually requires a player to trigger it from an area they can't escape from without dying.

Man, I don't even remember what it was, it's been so long. It wasn't the grenade behind the tombstone, was it? Or was it the button that killed the person who pressed it?

So much fun was had in thinking up this stuff. Recently I've been kicking around the idea of doing one last surreal/abstract map for CS:GO, complete with the hard to find secret dance club. Would be a good way to close out what was once a big, yet fun part of my life for a while. We'll see what happens, I suppose!

AlphaKennyOne wrote:Man, I don't even remember what it was, it's been so long. It wasn't the grenade behind the tombstone, was it? Or was it the button that killed the person who pressed it?

So much fun was had in thinking up this stuff. Recently I've been kicking around the idea of doing one last surreal/abstract map for CS:GO, complete with the hard to find secret dance club. Would be a good way to close out what was once a big, yet fun part of my life for a while. We'll see what happens, I suppose!

Yeah it was the grenade bouncing trick. Super precise. Also I am thrilled by the idea of one last abstract map, I hope you do decide to it! I was never around on these forums at the height of the abstract/halloween CS maps' popularity, but looking back on the countless old threads where people posted their work in progress, I can't imagine how fun it must've been to be in a community like that. Those pages are great to read (albeit with some dead image links ) and they give some cool insight into what got changed along the way.